Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0018799 (heart disease)
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We report two cases of heterozygous Fabry disease with severe organ damage. Case 1 was a 47-year-old woman. In April 1977, at the age of 27 years, she had proteinuria and edema around the 26th week of her second pregnancy and was diagnosed as toxicosis of pregnancy. She had proteinuria after the delivery. In 1990, a renal biopsy showed zebra bodies under electron microscopic findings, and the patient was diagnosed as Fabry disease. In 1998, a myocardial biopsy showed identical findings. The patient developed severe hypertension and decreased renal function, and alpha-galactosidase enzyme replacement therapy was initiated. However, despite treatment, she was started on dialysis in 2004. Case 2 was a 40-year-old woman. In March 2003, the patient presented with severe hypertension. The patient had cerebral infarction, cardiac hypertrophy, old myocardial infarction and renal failure without diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia and collagen disease. The patient was diagnosed as Fabry disease from persistent numbness and pain in the four extremities, a family history of mortality due to heart disease, and skin biopsy findings. She is currently undergoing enzyme replacement therapy. It is generally known that female Fabry disease patients are asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, as were the present two patients, but some can have marked organ disorders. Hence, even in female patients, it is necessary to consider Fabry disease as a causative disease of chronic renal failure.
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PMID:[Two cases of heterozygous Fabry disease]. 1691 64

Anderson-Fabry disease is an X-linked disorder that is caused by deficiency of the lysosomal enzyme alpha-galactosidase A. Symptoms include chronic progressive painful small-fibre neuropathy, cornea verticillata, renal failure and heart disease. Interestingly, female heterozygous patients may also show severe symptoms. After clinical suspicion, usually the determination of alpha-galactosidase activity in leukocytes is requested first. Alternatively, an enzymatic assay using dried blood specimens has been described. Dried blood samples require less material and are substantially more stable (several months at room temperature) than whole-blood specimens. To validate the new method and to asses its usefulness for diagnosis of female patients, enzyme activities of alpha-galactosidase, beta-galactosidase and beta-glucuronidase from 78 known Fabry patients were compared (29 males, 47 females) between both materials. In summary, the determination of alpha-galactosidase activity using dried blood and leukocytes as well as the ratio of alpha-galactosidase to beta-glucuronidase in dried blood can improve the diagnostic specificity in cases of female patients who are difficult to identify when only leukocyte enzyme activities are considered.
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PMID:Direct comparison of enzyme measurements from dried blood and leukocytes from male and female Fabry disease patients. 1769 54

Fabry disease is a lysosomal storage disorder that is caused by mutations in the gene encoding a-galactosidase A on Xq22.1. Typically hemizygous male patients exhibit classic phenotypes such as angiokeratoma, acroparesthesias, episodic pain "crises," hypohidrosis, and whorl-shaped corneal opacities from childhood. However, during adulthood, they gradually develop kidney failure, heart disease, and strokes resulting in early death between 40 to 50 years of age. However, recent studies have indicated a high prevalence of disabling clinical symptoms in heterozygous females patients. Patients having the cardiac variant of Fabry's disease exhibit only left ventricular hypertrophy, while patients having the renal variant exhibit only kidney failure. Individuals affected by these variants show higher residual enzyme activity of alpha-galactosidase A than individuals affected by the classic form of Fabry's disease due to missense mutations of the GLA gene. The cerebrovascular involvement in Fabry disease is not rare in both adult hemizygotes and heterozygotes. Infarctions caused by the occulsion of small vessels involving mostly the vertebrobasilar region in approximately two-thirds of the cases, and that is associated with the deposition glycoshingolipids including GL-3 in the walls of these vessels. In Caucasian patients, elongated, ectatic, and tortuous vertebral and basilar arteries are frequently observed on MRAs. Life-threatening megadolichobasilar anomaly with thrombosis has been identified in a large Hungarian family in which the family members share L16P mutation. On performing MRI, an increased signal intensity was observed in the pulvinar in T1-weighted images; this is the characteristic so-called "pulvinar sign". Enzyme replacement therapy has been approved in Japan since 2004 and 2007 for agalsidase beta and agalsidase alpha, respectively. This treatment modestly improves the small-fiber neuropathy, hypohidrosis, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and stabilizes the renal function in the long term for up to 54 months. However, it has not helped in decreasing the incidence of strokes.
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PMID:[Fabry disease in light of recent review]. 1906 57

Fabry disease is a rare X-linked lysosomal storage disorder caused by mutations in the alpha-galactosidase gene. The most frequent cardiac presentation of Fabry disease is cardiomyopathy characterized by left ventricular (LV) hypertrophy, usually concentric. Heart disease in affected females tends to be clinically recognized later than in males and cardiac complications are the most frequently reported cause of death in females with Fabry disease. There are few data regarding the association between Fabry disease and LV noncompaction. We report a case of a 30-year-old asymptomatic woman, heterozygous for a nonsense alpha-galactosidase gene mutation (p.R220X), who presented LV noncompaction on cardiac magnetic resonance imaging, without LV wall hypertrophy. Histopathological examination of myocardial fragments showed marked deposition of glycosphingolipids in cardiomyocytes, confirming the diagnosis of Fabry cardiomyopathy. Based on this finding, the patient was proposed for enzyme replacement therapy. This case illustrates the role of endomyocardial biopsy in the clarification of doubtful or atypical findings related to cardiac Fabry disease, even in heterozygous women, and corroborates the contention that Fabry disease should be included in the differential diagnosis of LV hypertrabeculation/noncompaction.
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PMID:Histopathological evidence of Fabry disease in a female patient with left ventricular noncompaction. 2584 11